Column of Marcus Aurelius, Piazza Colonna, Rome. November 2016
How Marcus helped me survive Ramadan in Saudi Arabia
By day three in Rome I was already in sensory overload. Processing history in Rome is like having a boulder of tiramisu fall on you, eating your way out, and then having to describe the experience. Constant "dazement" is what Rome was for me. I was between two places on the checklist - the Pantheon (wow) and the Spanish Steps (less wow). I stumbled upon the Piazza Colonna and met Marcus (NOT Marco, as spoken in vulgar Florentine). The detail of his column is so alive. Art historians use it as an example of a major shift in style to the "late classical age" which shows more drama and emotion than Trajan's more famous column at the Forum. I didn't realize Marcus was going to help me so much less than a year from that time.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
The Column of Marcus Aurelius has been there since at least 190 AD, but (as usual) people are unsure when it was actually constructed. Was it Marcus himself at the end of his reign or his son Commodus? It has since sunk several meters into the ground and a restoration in the 16th century created a new base - like the obelisk in St Peter's Square, Marcus' column has never moved. The square around it has hosted the Austr0-Hungarian Embassy to the Papal State and the Papal Post Office along with some palaces. It is graced with a small, but lovely fountain that was built after one of the popes "turned back on the water" to Rome via the system of ancient aqueducts. The column is made of Carrara marble and was hollowed out during construction for a set of stairs to reach the top. Where Marcus once stood, St Paul now gazes out over the piazza.
“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
My first Introduction to Philosophy class certainly merits its own essay in the future. One of the few times Georgetown completely let me down, I learned nothing from a visiting German professor with very bad English. Fast forward a decade and I audited an Introduction to Philosophy class at NYU (the instructor was a friend) while working there just so I could fill the gaps in my knowledge. Move ahead in time a couple more decades and I was uploading books to a Kindle for my upcoming job in Saudi Arabia. As I perused Project Gutenberg, Marcus' Meditations caught my eye and I added it to the nearly 300 books that I brought with me to the Middle East.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
The Islamic holidays "creep" through the Gregorian calendar because they are lunar and not solar. When I first arrived in Saudi Arabia, Ramadan was mid summer and part of summer vacation. Over the five years I stayed there, it slowly and ominously moved back in the Gregorian calendar toward the academic year. By year three, it came right at the end of spring semester which, in addition to other holidays, gave us all at the university a four month paid summer holiday. To this day, I can't believe I had a job where I got a full salary for four months to do nothing. There was, however, hell to pay after that glorious summer. As Ramadan crept INTO the academic year, we were forced to stay at work (even if we had finished). My last two years in Saudi Arabia I was contractually obliged to stay almost the entire month of Ramadan with no work to do yet no permission to leave the Kingdom. That is a LOT of free time in a place that is literally shuts down during daylight hours. Luckily, Marcus came to my aid.
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius ranks as one of the best books I have ever read. Basically his diary, compiled and published posthumously, it is not even a book per se but a collection of thoughts that he wrote down during his campaigns against the Germanic barbarians along the Danube. What an amazing leader to do battle during the day and be a philosopher at night. Marcus was a stoic, greatly influenced by Greek philosophers of the same name centuries before. I read his words in my apartment on those long Ramadan days and they helped enormously with my angst at being trapped in a place for a month with nothing to do.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus not only helped me to tolerate two stuck-in-one-place Ramadans, but also to deal with life as it came. I realized I had been a closet Stoic throughout my life. I understood why Buddhist philosophy (so strangely akin to Stoicism) resonated with me when I read it years ago as an undergraduate. Like a mantra I repeated to myself, "If I have no power to change a situation, then I must adapt not judge".
It doesn't always work, but it helps. Thank you, dear Marcus.